Windows 7 - looking to upgrade, but am having trouble deciding

i have been looking for really good board and new processor, i currently have a stock board with phenom 2 x4 3.4ghz black. for some time ive been wanting an i 7, but then i saw the phenom 2 x4 3.7ghz black. i tend to see allot of people who in my opinion are kindof intel fanboys and go a little overboard, i like the i7 2600k, but benchmarks can be done poorly and an opinion isnt saying much if its totaly bagging on the other. so the two things im looking at are.

Newegg.com - ASRock 990FX Extreme3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
and
Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDZ980FBGMBOX

i dont need to know if they are the best, but i am getting fed up with how much the price keeps going up with the intel stuff, seems every time i look they have somthing better for 5 times more. if you know of any reasonable priced am3 chips that could be better for close to the cost i would appreciate it. and some info on the matter from someone who may have tryed both chips (intel i7 2600k or amd 4x 3.7ghz) or know about both would be appreciated

also guess i never asked, is the processor even a step up from my 3.2? i would think it would be a drastic increase, but i could be wrong

You can look here for a general benchmark on CPUs from AMD and Intel:

PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End

The AMD Phenom II X4 980 scores 4750. That's about what an Intel i-5 2405S scores (4675).

Several AMD X6 processors rate higher---as high as 6301 for the Phenom II X6 1100T.

Some comparison points:

Intel i3-2100 at 3.10 GHz: 3856

Intel i5-2500 at 3.3 GHz: 6637

AMD FX-8150 8 core: 8341, the top AMD

Intel i7-2600 at 3.40 GHz: 8970

Intel i-7 3960X: 15327, the top overall

thank you for the link, but alot of people i see online seem to dis agree with these, i appreciate the source, however if i could get more reviews from people who know first hand which is better

this does make me wonder though,why is it on allot of benchmarks, amd is not so far behind intel, unlike this one where amd is half the speed which i know from first hand experienc isnt true

bang for buck the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Six Core 3.2GHz

fastest without talking silly money is the i7 2600 3.40GHz Sandy Bridge Quad Core

no doubt, like i said i was looking at the 2600k. but to be honest, like i said before, im tired of intel running up the price because they have somthing amd doesnt... A TITLE!

You never said what your main applications would be. Scores are one thing and not very telling. The real world is often different.

I would go for AMD. I agree with your analysis of the Intel spiel. And AsRock is a decent company and is known for good value. They use a lot of gold - LOL.

my main applications would be bf3,medal of honor, gears of war, Bad Co 2, blender 3d, maya, 3ds max,dragon age, da2, soon da3 when it comes out. visual studio, expression studio, AD inventor, luxrender, darksiders 2, skyrim, and gimp. i know that this is primarily graphics, but i can run bf3 full 60fps at 1920x1080 with my current chip and gpu, with a faster amd processor will it be much better u think?

Here I have to pass. This is mostly games of which I know nothing. I do not even play hearts. The games are always the first I delete. LOL

I would not upgrade your AMD from 3.4 to 3.7. I don't think you will see hardly any benefit from that small of a jump.